Right-wing dark money groups and Big Oil are pressuring the Supreme Court to shield the fossil fuel industry from paying for climate change-related damages.
By Freddy Brewster, THE LEVER
https://www.levernews.com/deploying-to-scotus-big-oils-dark-money-army
Dark-money conservative groups and Big Oil interests have quietly mobilized behind a landmark Supreme Court case that could restrict when and how states and municipalities can seek climate damages from fossil fuel companies. At the center of the case is an oil and gas company linked to a major Trump donor and personal ally of Justice Samuel Alito.
Suncor Energy Inc. v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County will decide whether states and local municipalities can sue oil and gas companies that knew fossil fuels contributed to worsening natural disasters and hid it from the public. Suncor is partially owned by Elliott Investment Management — a private equity firm led by Trump donor Paul Singer, who has vacationed with Alito — and has attracted the attention of the dark money network associated with Leo Leonard, the billionaire-backed architect of the far-right Supreme Court.
In 2018, Colorado’s Boulder County sued oil and gas companies Suncor and ExxonMobil, alleging that the companies “altered the climate in Colorado” and “concealed and misrepresented to the public what they knew about climate change and the dangers of continued and increasing fossil fuel use.”
Now that the matter is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court on Oct. 5, justices have been deluged with pro-industry amicus briefs from organizations tied to the “fossil fuel industry… and major climate-denial foundations and dark-money networks that have financed opposition to climate science and regulation for decades,” found a new investigation by advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. Such amicus briefs, which outside groups use to weigh in on matters before the court, are part of a broader, clandestine movement to sway Supreme Court justices, said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog.
“Follow the money, and you understand it’s a fossil-fuel-funded and interconnected echo chamber,” Court said in an email. “These groups are financed by the same fossil fuel companies, billionaire investors, and climate denial networks that spent decades disputing the industry’s role in climate change. Now they are asking the Supreme Court to make it harder to hold those companies accountable for deceiving the public.”
Consumer Watchdog found that at least 16 of the groups that filed amicus briefs supporting the oil and gas companies are funded by the Koch Network, a petrochemical-fueled conservative coalition, and nine of the groups received funding from Leo’s dark money machine. Ten of the groups were partially bankrolled by the Sarah Scaife Foundation, a conservative nonprofit that helped fund the Heritage Foundation as it wrote the Project 2025 blueprint to remake the federal government under the second Trump administration.
According a brief from the Atlantic Legal Foundation, a legal group that has received funding from both the Koch Network and Leo-connected groups, justices should reject Boulder County’s lawsuit because “federal law precludes state-law climate-change tort suits” and if the justices rule in the oil companies’ favor, it could “put an end to the growing wave of tort litigation against the fossil fuel energy industry.”
Singer is the CEO of Elliott Investment Management, which holds over $2 billion in Suncor stock. Singer has been involved in Leo’s dark money operations and has paid for joint vacations with Alito. Elliott has used Supreme Court rulings favorable to his interests to pressure federal regulators to abandon financial rules designed to combat fraud, The Lever revealed in 2023.
